Grief Glitter

Everyone says that grief is a cycle: you’re in denial, then you are angry about it, next a wave of depression washes over you, then you try to make sense of what happened, and then you accept it. Some say that you repeat the cycle, while others say that when you reach acceptance, you have finished the cycle. I think grief is a little bit different and isn’t always a cycle.

A little over a month ago, I lost a close friend of mine unexpectedly. Did I go through the grief cycle? Absolutely. I refused to believe he was gone until my social media was flooded with news about it. I was angry that the universe took him away from everyone who loved him. I cried what must have been a gallon of water throughout the last month, either in front of others or alone in my bedroom, letting my childhood stuffed panda absorb my tears. Throughout all of this, I kept asking myself if things would have been different if this happened or what if I talked with him more often… would he still be here? Then acceptance… I was supposed to accept that he was gone and there was nothing that I could do about it. If I am supposed to be following this cycle, I’ve yet to reach acceptance, yet I have gone back to other stages of the cycle. In school, I was taught that a cycle is a perfect circle, so how is grief considered a cycle?

Throughout the last month, I came across a video on social media about grief… actually, I saw a lot of videos about grief (phones really do listen to you). One of the videos talked about how grief is like glitter. When grief starts, it is like an explosion of glitter; you try to clean it up and keep yourself composed. You think it is gone, but then you find a speck of it hidden in a corner, and the grief starts up again. That is how this last month has felt. The first week was the traditional grief cycle up until the funeral. After that, I was surrounded by people who were not currently going through what I was going through. At times, I would be happy, enjoying the holidays with my family and hanging out with my friends. Then I would find the grief glitter. I could be watching a movie, and they referenced someone who had passed, or I would be doing something that reminded me of him. The tears would start flowing, and parts of the cycle would occur.

So, do I think grief is a cycle… sort of. Yes, the stages in the cycle of grief seem pretty accurate. I’ve experienced almost all of them (still working on the acceptance part), but I would think that I had overcome the grief, but then it would sneak back up on me like glitter stuck in the carpet. If you don’t follow the society’s expectations of grief, that’s ok! There is not one way to grieve; you might not even think of glitter as a good reference for grief, but I hope that sharing my perspective on grief helps anyone who is struggling right now.

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